


War (It's Looking For You)

by Lionfire42



Series: The Marvelous Brotherhood [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Body Horror, Dehumanization, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mind Manipulation, Murder, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, WinterSoldier!Evie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24071491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionfire42/pseuds/Lionfire42
Summary: Don't worry, she tried to tell him with her eyes, her breath knocked out from her by the blow that lead her to be dangling from a speeding train like a worm on a hook.It'll be okay. You can do this without me. I'll always be with you.She hopes it'll be enough, that he'll find someone else to watch his back. That he won't blame himself.The bar breaks and she plummets into the abyss.
Relationships: Evie Frye & Jacob Frye
Series: The Marvelous Brotherhood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1717084
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	War (It's Looking For You)

She was always the calm one, the pragmatic one. She was the ice to her brother's fire, easing his tempers and frustration with measured reactions, a soothing presence in the face of his ill-fated helplessness. The elder, however insignificantly, the protector to one who would shield others, no matter how unsuited to the task he was.

And later, when he became someone, _something_ larger than life, she still stood at his side. A bigger shadow meant bigger blind-spot after all, and it was her job to be there for him, be that with a pistol in hand, a rifle providing cover fire, or the shoulder he cried on when the world forgot that he--they--were barely past the threshold of adulthood. 

It was her job to protect him.

_Don't worry_ , she tried to tell him with her eyes, her breath knocked out from her by the blow that lead her to be dangling from a speeding train like a worm on a hook. _It'll be okay. You can do this without me. I'll always be with you._

Protect him, even until the end.

The bar bends under her weight.

She hopes it'll be enough, that he'll find someone else to watch his back. That he won't blame himself.

The bar breaks and she plummets into the abyss.

_God protect him. I no longer can_.

* * *

She wakes up.

This development is, understandably, unexpected.

It was so bright. Was this heaven?

But heaven didn't seem like it would be this cold. So cold it burned. And her body hurt, all over--throbbing spikes of agony.

Dark shapes hovered in front of her. Their voices were incomprehensible. Angels?

_"...-ound…"_

_"…arm…"_

_"…-ir!..."_

The darkness rose to swallow her.

_"…-ail Hydra"_

No, not angels.

Demons.

  
  
  


Her body is heavy, but the air is warm. Hot even. There's a press of bodies surrounding her, murmuring over her. Her eyes flutter open, only to recoil as piercing light registers, sending pain spiking through her head. Her mouth is bone-dry, her throat screaming in pain as it convulsed, trying to wet itself.

She tries to ask for water, but she can't find her voice. Instead she raises her arm and it's…

Wrong. 

Too heavy and too light and oddly numb at the same time. She squints through what she's starting to recognize as hospital lights, raising her arms for inspection--

She stares. 

Where her left arm should be is instead a mass of polished steel, gleaming in the light as servos whir and plates flex, twisting and moving steel fingers at her command, so easily, too easily.

Her brain cannot comprehend the sight. What happened to her? What--?

The shapes around her begin to solidify into people, who begin to chitter excitedly when they begin to notice her moving. One gets close enough to begin to poke at her new appendage with a sharp object, completely ignoring her in favor of talking to his fellows.

In _German_.

Silver fingers open and reach in tune with her instincts, lashing out to wrap around the man's--the doctor, the _German_ doctor's-- throat. With barely a clench she squeezes, and she feels the vibration as muscle and spine in his neck are broken and crushed.

Arms grab at her, and she lashes out, the rest of her body still heavy but swiftly growing stronger, faster. She bucks against the press as people, swiftly realizing that simply holding her is doomed to fail, clamber onto her chest and arms, holding her down with their weight. Even that is useless; she snarls and bucks and three men are nearly dislodged as a result.

A piercing sharp pain hits her once, twice. A languid heaviness begins to leech into her bones, and her struggles grow weaker. The weight of the men disappear but she cannot feel her limbs anymore. The sounds of alarm begin to grow distant, like her ears are full of water.

As the darkness encroaches again, the face of a pudgy man with round spectacles appears above her and she has the faint recollection of having seen his face before, haloed by falling snow. He's saying something she can no longer hear, but she can read his lips.

_Sleep, Miss Frye_ , he says. _Sleep_.

_Hydra has great plans for you._

  
  
  


They try psychology first, appeals to honor and her supposedly limited intelligence as a woman, as if she's too stupid to comprehend what they are trying to do.

_You were left for dead_ , they say. _We rescued you, saved you, rebuilt you. Surely you'd like to extend your gratitude_.

_We could give you so much more_ , they cajole. _They did not appreciate you, but we will. You are far more valuable than you know_.

_Your brother is dead_ , they say, feigning sympathy. _You could continue his work, short-sighted as it was. You can help us save the world, save humanity from themselves_.

She gives them the response that such words deserve and proceeds to, in a very unladylike manner, spit in their faces.

They move on to torture then. Waterboarding, beatings, starvation and dehydration. 

They have to work hard, pump her full of powerful drugs in doses that can kill three men because the chemicals they injected in her before, their bastardized version of Erskine's serum, has _worked_ and made her taller, faster, stronger. The bruises and cuts they inflict heal within hours, the bones they break mend within days. She can remain lucid without drink for days, food for weeks, and the drugs they use to make her mind wander and her senses numb burn out within hours.

She taunts them, mocks them in a manner that would make her brother howl in laughter. They have to double, then triple the guard presence because she tears through anything less like wet paper. Twice she makes it miles away from the base into the mountains, and they are forced to actually shoot her with tranqs and bullets to recapture her. Even then she makes them work for it, fighting hordes of Nazis, knowing that she is far more valuable to the people in charge than any mooks they send, knowing that while a dozen men may make the mistake of pulling their punches, she has no such qualms and will make them regret it. 

The fools forget she was on the battlefields, that she knows the sensations of being wet and cold and starving. They forget she was a sniper who spent days in the same position, ignoring her screaming body and the harshness of the elements in order to score that perfect shot. They forget she knows the pain of bullets, of broken bones, that she can get her hands on any variety of weapons and knows how to use them.

They will not break her--not like this.

  
  
  
  
  
  


And then they bring in something they call the Chair.

  
  
  
  
  


Her memories get...hazy after that. 

* * *

The decades blur by in a haze of pain, cold, gunfire and blood.

The chair sends lightning through it's skull, stripping away parts of it until it barely understands anything outside of what it needs to do to complete the Mission.

It's not allowed outside of the cryo-chamber for too long, lest it start to Malfunction. The longer it's away from the Chair and the Chamber, the more distractions start to appear. Faces and voices it doesn't know echo in it's peripherals and ears, scents send waves of deja vu piercing through the reinforced shroud of detachment in it's mind. 

It doesn't spend all it's time in the Chair or Chamber. It doesn't Malfunction as often when isolated from the outside world, so it will be assigned to spend weeks or even months training every decade, learning about the new technologies and weapons and martial art styles and national conflicts and borders and languages. It's made to run through the material time and time again, put in the Chair, then made to learn and remember again, until it's so ingrained, so instinctive that even the electricity that's sent through it's brain can't wipe it away.

One time, in the mid-80's, it's kept out of the Chamber for almost a year, made to train young girls how to kill and sabotage and get away without a trace.

Another time, in the 90s, they have it train promising young recruits injected with a new version (and yet, according to the briefing, also an old one) of the serum--one it personally secured--that runs through it's veins. The project is considered a failure; the serum seems to change the recruits, twist them, turning rabid fanaticism into something even worse. All except one is killed; the last is considered the worst, and yet also the most stable of the bunch, and put on ice until time and resources can be better devoted into better controlling him.

(Decades later, when _it_ becomes _she_ again, Evie Frye will stare at the graphic images of undercover Assassins and Templars both, strung up and tortured and disemboweled, ripped apart by serrated blades and nearly incomprehensible strength.

She'll have echoes of deep, mocking laughter, a coffin of ice glazing over a red-eyed struggling madman, and shudder as the faintest remembrances of a name floats up through her tattered memories: _Jack._ )

Hydra changes as the decades do. Even to it's limited time and deliberately disjointed memories and perceptions, it can see the evolution of the organization. The multi-headed pin worn by Hydra's most prominent members become replaced with red crosses, Hydra becomes less of a world entity and more of a subsidiary, a detachment of a larger organization, used as its fist in the changing world. _Hydra_ becomes replaced more and more with talk of _Templars_ and _Hail Hydra!_ becomes replaced with _May the father of understanding guide us_.

* * *

  
  


It meets it's first Assassin in the mid-70's. It then proceeds to kill it's first Assassin in the mid-70's.

It senses the presence with the mysterious sixth-sense that enhances it's senses, the sense that awoke so long ago, back when it vaguely thinks it may have been a person, and before the Chair. It believes the Templars must have tried to experiment with one of their coveted golden artifacts, the alien devices it's sometimes sent to steal and kill for, if only because it remembers a golden light and a brief, but chilling insidious whisper.

The handlers think it's simply the brutal training it has been given and the unique enhancement of it's senses and brain--being able to scent gunpowder and blood and cleaning oil, the ability to see the twitches and tells and flexes of an opponent's body, allowing it to predict and react with lightning speed--along with it's enhanced healing and incredible tolerance for pain--it remembers once, being forced to kneel by a red-headed handler, being forced to put it's flesh hand over open flame and not being allowed to remove it or flinch or _scream_ \--that make it such a dangerous foe. 

It doesn't enlighten them. It doesn't know why.

(It may be because of the voice that whispers in the back of it's mind sometimes, that it knows to protect, to jealousy guard. The voice, battered and curled up in what little shelter it can maintain, rendered nearly powerless by decades of abuse, but nevertheless retaining an unbroken thread of _steel_ , the voice it sometimes finds the strength and autonomy to listen to when she yells at it to _run._ )

The assassin drops down from nearly four stories, intending to bury their blade in it's handler's neck and use the body as a cushion for their fall. It melts from the shadows and wrenches the handler out of the way, and the assassin adapts with remarkable speed, twisting their body to use another bodyguard as a landing pad instead.

There's an explosion of smoke and the surrounding ~~incompetent~~ guards cough and sputter. The makeshift cover is thick but not thick enough for it to not see the glimmer of steel and distortion in the smoke as the assassin darts forward in a determined gambit to cease the handler's life.

For a split second it contemplates pretending to be equally blinded by the smoke and let the Assassin finish the deed. But like a broken horse, the threatened spike of pain that the punishment for failing would incur Lance's through it's brain, and it reaches out, stopping the assassin's gauntleted arm and arresting their momentum. 

There's a subtle click and _snick_ that, had it used it's left arm, it would not have felt. It jerks the captured arm to the side and the hidden blade that would have buried itself in the handler's throat instead cuts a thin line along his flabby, pale cheek.

The gauntlet is well-made, and well-maintained. It squeezes and is slightly surprised at how much effort it needs to exert to dislodge and break the deceptively strong gears. There's a quiet snap as the strength is used snaps the blade within it's casing.

The assassin utters a low curse, and lashes out with their other arm, burying a second, less obvious blade in it's left shoulder. 

Or rather, they attempt to.

There's an almost comical _clink_ as the stiletto blade bounces off the sheet metal of it's cybernetic. It latches onto the outstretched arm, twisting it until their wrist snaps.

The preternatural sense tickles it's mind and knees the assassin in the groin, before lifting them by the neck like a ragdoll and smoothly pivoting so that the second assassin's bullet buries itself in it's makeshift shield's lower back.

"No!" The second assassin sounds male and middle age, and in the light it can see the impotent rage and fury in his eyes.

It's shield coughs, spattering phlegm and blood on it's mask. "Run!" They--he--chokes.

"But-!"

The guards are starting to recover as the smoke dissipates, though the shrieking orders issued by the shocked Handler do little to organize them.

"That's an--order!" It's captive slams his broken blade into it's arm, but it barely feels the blow, it's thick leather coat and muscled arms, as well as the off angle, preventing any significant damage.

"Asset!" The Handler screams. "Capture him!"

It throws the first assassin back and away, lunging for the second and ignoring the meaty thud as it's captured prey collides with the unforgiving stone.

  
  
  
  


The second assassin manages to escape, and it is punished--but the punishment is lessened for having delivered an alive assailant.

When the agony of the Chair is fading to the creeping cold of the Chamber, it can still hear the screams as the assassin's torture begins.

  
  
  
  


It wakes up half a decade later with a new modification to it's arm--a retractable blade that extends from it's wrist ( _a hidden blade_ , the technicians call it), and the shoulder-plate that once had a red star now bears a bloody cross--and a long standing mission: the elimination of targets that are part of or affiliated with the group known as the Brotherhood of Assassins.

Targets have new meaning now: it's either sent after Assassins or their associates or else former Templars.

(Once it's sent after a former pupil, a red-headed girl, in the 90s, one of the best of the batch from it's stint as an instructor. She's good; granted, it doesn't try too hard, merely catches up to her and shoots her once (she'll survive, and it's instructions with vague anyway, thanks to the blustering of an over-confident handler (his time is brief, even as Handlers go -- unfortunately, the next handler, a politician and businessman by the name of Starrick is not so)) and uses the threat of exposure to as excuse to flee.)

It spends the next decades doing this, until 2015, when everything is upturned.

It starts with a vital mission: the elimination of the infamous Brotherhood worldwide leader, the Mentor, Altair Ibn-La'Ahad.

It ends with a killer headache, regained autonomy, and her dragging the man known as Sir Britain (her family, her brother, the missing half of her _soul_ ) free from the wreckage of a downed helicopter and out of the mouth of the Thames onto a secluded riverbank.

She leaves him there and sinks into the shadows until she confirms the people who pick his limp body up are Assassins.

And then she flees. Her head is a mess, full of disjointed memories and emotions. Her shoulder is still dislocated and at least two ribs are broken. She needs to hide and recover and _think_.

For the first time in decades, she's free to do so.

* * *

After running and hiding and an unfortunate incident (in which the Italian billionaire turned Assassin Ezio Auditore learned just _who_ murdered his family (but that's another story)) for over a year, she is granted some peace by the grace of the Golden Wolf, known by his people as Ratonhnhaké:ton and to the outside world as the civil rights lawyer Connor Lupis.

He lets her stay on the Mohawk Reservation lands. There, she spends months in a small cottage by the St. Lawrence River, fishing and reading. It's not easy with one arm, but the inconvenience is outweighed by the immeasurable relief she feels no longer having a symbol of such death literally attached to her. A part of her wishes to thank Auditore, but tear-filled eyes and screams of rage and anguish reverberate through her memories, and she decides that's a path best left untouched--at least for now.

Still, she feels...unfulfilled. Too solid and too incorporeal at the same time. Sometimes she'll sit to read and get stuck on a single word, stuttering like a buffering video until she'll abruptly come back to herself and realize hours have passed. She'll go days without eating, ravenously hungry and unable to tolerate a single bite.

It may be because there are three people in her noggin: There's Evie, the "sweet sister" that Jacob tries to coax to the surface on his occasional visits with supposedly favorite foods and old stories that should be familiar, the one he's so desperate to find again, constantly searching her face for the traces of that girl who wiped his brow as he lay wracked with coughs.

There's the Asset (who also goes by the Soldier, Winter, Huntress, _Monster_ ). It's cold and impersonal, lingering in the back of her mind, always watching. It doesn't take control, but she knows it will if it believes that's what it must do in order to keep them alive. 

~~Sometimes, she comes to with the spare pistol disassembled in front of her, and she knows that it's taken control, has stopped her from putting the barrel in her mouth and _pulling the trigger_ \-- ~~

. 

And then there's her, the inbetween, the broken remnants of the memories Evie Frye tried to hold on to and the memories the Asset feels it has no need of. A cobbled together amalgamation of woman and machine. Living a false peace with the faces of her victims haunting her sleep and the constant feel of blood coating her skin, so thick that nothing can wash away the feeling.

Jacob comes by one day to find her sitting in her shower, icy water raining down on her, as she stares blankly in the distance.

"I can't…" Her voice fails and she tries again, raising her eyes to meet his tear-filled ones. "I can't get it off. The red."

He moves in three days later.

A part of her resents this. I don't need a ~~Handler~~ babysitter, she thinks. "The Brotherhood needs you," she says. "You can't waste time on me."

"You're never a waste," he responds fiercely.

And he holds her, ignoring her tensing shoulders, unimpeded by the gap caused by her missing limb. He holds her until her body unwinds, until her frame shakes from the unclenching of muscles she didn't even know were clenched. He holds her as he cries unabashedly into her neck, as his tears trigger her own, as they feed and relish the reconnecting of their other halves for the first time in decades. He holds her as they confess in the dark how much they both need blankets and heat and noise to never ever be alone and trapped in the cold and quiet and their too loud, blood-stained thoughts.

"We're broken," she murmurs, curled in his arms on the too small bed.

"We're twins," he counters gently. "We're meant to be broken--until we're together again. And then...we're unstoppable."

Unstoppable? Them? An unstable cripple and a walking flag? 

She snorts at that and feels his smile against her neck in the dark. "We'll be okay," he vows, with the unshakable confidence that persisted a century.

And for the first time in decades, she thinks she might have hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to get a measure of Winter Soldier!Evie's mental state, but I don't think I quite succeeded. Both she and Jacob are mentally scarred, but being around each other helps. The twins would have a deeper connection than James Barnes and Steve Rogers, because I think as twins, their bond is something that can't be truly defined. 
> 
> If anyone's wondering, Henry will make a cameo in this series, but not as a love interest for two reasons:  
> 1) The position he'll have would make any love interest with an Evie a conflict of interest.  
> 2) I don't hate him, but I never really cared or got invested in him when playing Syndicate. I never played the Last Maharajah DLC, so any additional nuances to his character was missed by me.
> 
> I did play Jack the Ripper DLC, as you might have guessed. Plus I always thought that having the threat of a bunch of super soldiers being woken up, only for all to be a trap was a bit of a waste.
> 
> I decided to make Connor the Black Panther of this world, hence his status as the Golden Wolf. Altair is Fury, though I doubt I'll make a story for him; his history is as convoluted as Fury's.
> 
> Those who are really into Assassin's Creed lore history, the Assassin Evie captured was Umar Ibn-La'Ahad, whose death is a catalyst for a ton of stuff.
> 
> Finally, I'm kind of annoyed because I intended for Kassandra to be the Thor of this world, but now that the Valhalla trailer has dropped...


End file.
